Soukou no Strain – 10

Having taken the Mimic box out of Emily, Melchisedec and Carmichael tell the Libertad officers that it’s actually 600 years old. In comparison, Strains are only 150 years old. When Melchisedec opens up the Mimic, he is shocked to find a non-human brain and a pair of eyes inside. They decide to investigate it further, and at the same time, on the Deague ship, Emily wakes up from a nightmare. When she asks Ralph to hurry and save a girl, it reminds him of how a similar girl had said the same thing a long time ago. He goes to talk with Medlock about it, but she can’t spare any more time because Deague fleet movements require them to be present. Medlock then heads into the shower, and Ralph responds by pulling out the power circuits to her room, locking her inside the bath. The next destination for Ralph is the bridge where he shoots all the crew members, including Barrow. While he’s at the controls, a female crew member sees the mess and runs off, so Ralph methodically proceeds through the entire ship killing everyone. As he’s doing this, Ralph is reminded of the time back when he was still with Union and had approached an enemy ship. Back then, Ralph had been confronted with an unfamiliar Strain-like enemy and had destroyed them all, much like he’s executing the entire crew now.

Upon destroying the last enemy years ago, Ralph had seen a young girl had fall out of the cockpit. Plagued by this image, the current Ralph almost shoots Emily, but stops himself and tells her to go back to her room. After smashing his head into the wall a few times, Ralph returns to Medlock and releases her from the bathroom. He gives her only a towel to wear, and when she complains about someone seeing her, he tells her that there’s no one left to do so. Ralph forces her to the bridge and wants her to pilot the ship by herself so that they can continue their pursuit. Medlock is able to do so, but she first questions why Ralph is doing all this since she was supposed to be his ally. Meanwhile, the Libertad has accelerated to sub-light speeds on its way to Bregma to meet the Union fleet. Melchisedec wants permission to investigate the Mimic, so Craven grants it with the condition that he finish before they get to Bregma in two days. With this, Melchisedec sends Carmichael to get Sara so that he can tell her about the 600 year age of the Mimic. Sara realizes that such an old Mimic shouldn’t be able to link with her, but that’s what Melchisedec wants to investigate. They put her in Sara and the Mimic into her Strain and tell Sara to link with Emily.

Upon activation, Sara is met and hugged by Emily, and she is then taken to a world in the past where all the beings look like Emily. One of the ships of Emily’s race met with trouble and was discovered by mankind. Dubbing them as aliens, man’s scientists realized that the girls shared the same conscious and had proceeded to dissect them. Man’s goal was to use their consciousness to create a communication system capable of being used instantly over light-year distances. There was also the possibility that man could find a way to travel faster than light through this. With all this going on, Emily had been personally sent to Glabella for military research involving Strains. After that, to recapture herself, the group consciousness chased after Emily, and that’s when Ralph appeared. After he had destroyed each of their vessels and had found out that they were being piloted by young girls, Ralph had been reminded of his own young sister. He had figured out what Union was doing was doing to Emily’s race and had asked what he could do to make up for it. The girl in his arms had told him to save another girl and had opened a star gate through a diamond marking on her forehead.

Sara doesn’t see any more of the past because things are getting out of control in the hanger, so Melchisedec pulls the plug on Emily. However, this was enough for her to understand what her brother is doing. Over on the Deague ship, Barrow – who had survived being shot by Ralph – is reprogramming the Tumors when Ralph comes to take control of them and shoots Barrow in the head. The Libertad meanwhile arrives at Bregma, but the allied fleet is nowhere to be found.

Preview:

As I was watching this, I couldn’t help but think about how cruel or self-serving those scientists’ actions were in treating Emily’s race, yet I can understand how they want to advance mankind too. It certainly portrays Union in a poor light, and it would finally explain why Ralph defected. But as this episode shows, Ralph’s not really on Deague’s side either (in the preview, Sara even remarks that all humans are Ralph’s enemy). He’s instead devoted to saving Emily and the Mimic version of her. Actually, I guess calling it the “Mimic version” isn’t really correct since that’s the dissected form of another one of her race.
My question is what Ralph’s going to do if and when he gets a hold of the other Emily. I’m also curious if Emily’s race or Deague had something to do with the disappearance of the Union fleet at Bregma. With only three episodes left, they’ve done a good deal of the explaining in this episode, but there’s still a lot more to see. I look forward to episode 11, coming after another two week hiatus on January 31st.

Basically, the union higher ups are bastards and I don’t blame Ralph for betraying them, but it is not only the union. All humanity is Ralph enemy as you will see in episode 10 and it also tells you that in the preview. massive bloody episode.

Emilies weren’t mass produced. The humans species found them and conducted a bunch of experiments on them (without putting them to sleep because they didn’t have enough technology to), and found out that they can communicate with each other instantly without any interval at all. So humans decided to create a new weapon with that technology, to be called “Strain”. Emilies got pissed and went after Union in their own Strain-like mechs, but most got shot down by Ralph, who realized what Union has been doing. Then the last Emily he shot down did something to him that they didn’t explain in this episode.

What that one Emily did to Ralph may have done some serious damage, both inside and out. Remember he was hacking up blood in the last episode? Also, consider the apparent change in his personality – before what was done to him, he was still killing them for the sake of the Union (or so I presume, not having seen the episode yet *sigh*). After, he was suddenly on this grim reaper mission AGAINST the Union and probably the Deague as well; at least I assume he won’t stand for the Deague performing the same experiments that the Union performed. Incidentally, this explains how Emily the doll works; if Emily’s extraterrestrial species has the power of instant communication by nature, then their MIMICs probably do as well and can communicate with any person, whereas Union MIMICs use human brain cells, which generally speaking only communicate with themselves.

I think it’s the mixture of one of the Emily ‘communicating’ with Ralph frying his brain and finding out the Union was experimenting on lolis(which makes him reminisce about his sis-con who was also a loli at that time) that made him go loony.

Yes, the young girl triggers memories of Sara. In the first shot of him fighting, he was really shocked to discover a kid was piloting the other craft. Still, Sara seemed to understand his reasons. Maybe we’ll get a family reunion, and she will turn renegade.That would be cool

guys, my japanese may not be great; but from what i deduced from the
contact. Ralph was deperessed at the fact that he had killed a human-like
pilot in the shape of a child. Remember the Deredge was said to use automated
drones to attack the Union and lacked the technology to duplicate the Strains.
Even the mercurarian fuel was said to be difficult to create since the base
material was used in different manners and hard to replicate.

In the scean where Ralph is depressed he was banging away at the walls in degust
for killing a child-like pilot who could have easily been Sarah. Remember thoughts
of Sarah passed thru his mind as we was getting more upset. During this time he
said he wished there was something he could do to fix things and the Emily like
doll said it was possible if he meant it. Then the merge.

perhaps the merger was too much for him or as some people has said the fact
that the Union knew about the origin of their species and made a weapon of them
only fuels the possiblilty that they could produce a Strain of their own and
start to attack their new common enemy.

As for Sarah crying. common guys, she felt the pain of the emilys during the
forced memory merge. She understood why Ralph went a bit off the wall and now
she satifsify that “why” question. All thats left is will she still have to
kill Ralph as she said she would or are they going to create some kind of time
paradox story where everything gets undone.

Remember they are moving faster than light, and as Carlies age to his younger
brother (now older), perhaps going back in time is not out of line.

I would be interested in a reply to those that can understand japanese better
on what i reasoned out of the stories.

oh yeah what the hell you mean by sub-light? do you fucking know what sub means? sub-light means regular propulsion, such as chemical engines that go at normal speeds, ie not as fast or faster than the speed of light. you should say faster than light, or ftl as it’s commonly called, dumbass

This episode was one of the saddest episodes in anime history. What with the treatment of Emily’s race and Ralph’s Shooting spreee. That part where the girl was pleading for her life with a look of utter terror on her face and Ralph shoots her anyway made even me quiver in shock. Short of begging on her knees, the animators captured her sheer terror on a person’s face when facing their moment of death. Isabella’s death scene face can’t compare to her’s. even i think this killing spree went too far.